The Millennium Project's 2013 - 2014 State of the Future

The above conversation is a snapshot to accompany the Millennium Project's report "2013 - 2014: State of the Future" -

"The Millennium Project is a global participatory think tank connecting 50 Nodes around the world that identify important long-range challenges and strategies, and initiate and conduct foresight studies, workshops, symposiums, and advanced training. Over 4,500 futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities have participated in The Millennium Project’s research since its inception in 1996."

The Project’s CEO Jerome Glenn picked out some high-point recommendations:

• Establish a US + China 10-year environmental security - meaning environmental viability for life support - goal to reduce climate change and improve trust.
• Grow meat without growing animals to reduce water demand and Green House Gas emissions. He also mentions an FAO study from 2006 that says the animal industry has a greater effect on greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation industry (http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/News/2006/1000448/index.html).
• Develop seawater agriculture for biofuels, carbon sink, and food without rain.
• Build a global collective intelligence system for input to long-range strategic plans. Visit the Millennium Project’s Global Futures System here.
• Create tele-nations connecting brains overseas to the development process back home. Glenn compares this to online dating, connecting local business plans to, say, a mind at the World Bank to help with their development.
• TransInstitutions for more effective implementation of strategies. Glenn envisions an organization whose governing body includes representation from government, business, academia, corporations, and international or regional systems. the organization is working with the bottom-line, knowledge, politics, social value, and the larger area because they’re all represented. “That institutional structure is an important new addition to the menu we currently have to work with."
• Create a global counter-organized-crime strategy. Fighting transnational organized crime on a global scale would combat governmental corruption, which in many places where governments are “bought and sold like heroine…makes democracy an illusion."

The full 2013 - 2014 report lives here. I just ordered us a copy of the 2015 - 2016 report. (Spoiler: The report “confirms that the world is winning more than losing, but where it is losing is very serious.”)